


Foundling

by orphan_account



Series: Fantastic Spiders and Where to Find Them [1]
Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Child eating, Gen, Gore, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28429113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A spider eats a kid. They both live, but neither survives.
Series: Fantastic Spiders and Where to Find Them [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2082300
Kudos: 8





	Foundling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caramelchameleon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caramelchameleon/gifts).
  * Inspired by [my better half](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9842546) by [caramelchameleon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caramelchameleon/pseuds/caramelchameleon). 
  * Inspired by [ODE OF SPIDER-KIND](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22096951) by [Mirthandir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirthandir/pseuds/Mirthandir). 



> “'I ate a human child,' it replies, setting the useless hunk of glass aside and starting on another soggy package. The compound eyes are blank, round, and white, impossible to discern expression from. 'He didn’t go away like a regular meal. He stayed, and our minds touched, and it changed us.'”
> 
> — [caramelchameleon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caramelchameleon), [my better half](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9842546)

First, there is the nest. Then comes mother: their queen, she who created their home with her sacred web, who protects and feeds them. The third and fourth belong to his grim siblings, forever hollow—a terrible curse, their famine, one as true as the moon that never settles on the shadow king’s throne. They lurk beneath the silk, hungry and cruel, their viciousness making them hungrier still.

The thief’s creeping is slow, fearful. Fitting for a pawn as dull as him; only the fool ones would try to steal from him and his brothers. The web tangles around his ankle and scouts emerge to pierce his skin; crush thin bones with their claws. It’s not a hard job, really, not as hard as it should be, were he fat enough for their jaws to close around his neck.

The boy spasms twice, cries out and he’s finally gone, the remaining of his life fleeing from between one of their fangs.

They jump at once.

It’s a beautiful thing, the eating; chewing, breaking, their acid saliva melting cartilage and gut alike. Young meat is their favorite—sweet, and tenderer than any scaled drooping or smelly enemy. They enjoy it as much as they can, which is no little, whenever they can, which is not often. The cluster is always hungry.

Soon only the thickest bones are left, those not even their worst spit can thaw. They’ll stay there, a grim remainder of their feast for the scarceness to come, or until a warrior gives in to the temptation and breaks his fangs in the process. It wouldn’t be the first time; sometimes little pieces of prey will stay inside, a stubborn sliver of tendon or an eye dangling from a cracked socket, and it will surely drive them mad. But atlas, that it’s how it has to be.

This time is different, though, for what’s left sitting in their den, fresh and still dripping with fluids, it’s not a mere bite of muscle, but a whole brain. He eyes the skull, unbroken by his sibling’s brute force and desperate hunger, and the tempting pulls at his insides, makes of his gut a empty hole for the head to fill. Soon, there is nothing to tell it ever was there.

Pain follows immediately, his stomach churning and stirring, burning him from the inside. He stumbles blindly and the light web gives in below him. It hurts, it hurts, why does it _hurt_?

He feels the rough hair of his younger sister, nuzzling him close, but only makes him want to shriek. He can’t hiss, has to hiss, hasn’t stopped hissing at all. His eyes are pinched horridly and he can’t see anything but his own pain, all-consuming as it is, a pull in his mind as strong as the hunger and double the fear. Even those bend down under the fire that consumes him too.

It takes long enough for him to remember what it feels to fear again. The sensation floats up, a little raft in the sea of suffering his mind has become. He pays him a little attention among his death rattles and frantic thoughts—oh mother, why won’t it stop? _Please, please, please..._

Except it then does.

The pain ceases. So does he.

**Author's Note:**

> Conclusion: spiders are flowery assholes.


End file.
